Yara Asmar (Musician and Puppeteer)

Yara is a musician and puppeteer hailing from Beirut, Lebanon. Her debut album, "Home Recordings 2018-2021," recorded with a phone and tape recorder, has been described as "a truly dreamy, translucent, and amorphous album of delicate classicism, explorative percussion, and ambient" by Monolith Cocktail. Following this, her release, "Synth Waltzes & Accordion Laments," made it to Pitchfork's "30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023," incorporating a smaller sound palette.

In a review for Cyclic Defrost, Bob Baker Fish writes, "Her music is strange, adventurous, elongated, and highly idiosyncratic, it's music that beckons you from afar and if you’re willing to get close enough will fill your soul."

 

 Project description 

The musical project by Yara Asmar will consist of a series of compositions, interviews with the local community, and a live musical performance that utilizes the lake as a musical instrument. Inspired by her upbringing in Lebanon, a country embraced by the Mediterranean Sea from the West, and observing the gradual privatization of the beach, she aims to explore and speak up about the tangible, concrete impact a body of water can have on the people living around it. The realization of the project involves the use of numerous hydrophones submerged underwater, which will then be processed through electronics to compose music through the lake.

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Claudio Beorchia (Interdisciplinary artist)

He studied Design and Visual Arts at Iuav University in Venice and at the Fine Arts Academy Brera in Milan. He holds a PhD in Design Sciences from Iuav University Doctorate School.

Through commissions, awards, and residency programs, he has carried out projects and shown his works in Italy and abroad. Among the solo exhibitions: “Com sonen aquests llocs?”, Mucbe Museum, Benicarlò, Spain, 2023; “Characters and Spaces”, Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld, Germany, 2023; “Tell me a river”, K18 Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia, 2021; “Signals and Words”, XPO Gallery, Enschede, Netherlands, 2020; “Between heaven and earth”, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Milan, Italy, 2019-2020; “Aurale”, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy, 2019. He often works through residency programs. He has participated in numerous residency programs: in Italy, many European countries, China, Japan, and the United States. Among the residencies: Tides Institute, Eastport, Maine, U.S.A, 2022; Serlachius Museum, Mantta, Finland, 2018; Omi International Art Center, Ghent, New York, United States, 2017; Viborg Kunsthal, Viborg, Denmark, 2015; Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, China, 2013.

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 Project description 

During the residency, the artist will undertake a photographic project about Ohrid. This project involves the participation of residents living in houses near the lake, resulting in a photographic series that captures the environment in an intimate and domestic manner.

The artist intends to capture images of the lake from the windows of houses belonging to those residing near its shore. He aims to capture the everyday view of the lake from that window together with the person living there. Through a door-to-door approach and seeking introductions to neighbors, the artist will produce a photographic series portraying a different, more ordinary, and familiar lake/urban/domestic landscape. This stands in contrast to the exceptional, panoramic, and stereotypical views often sought by tourists, resulting in clichéd, banal, and repetitive photos. Through the relational process by which the project will be developed, the artist will try to show the bonds that unite and hold people together, and that give life to the local community living around the lake.

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Selma Boskailo & Anders Ehlin

Selma Boskailo is a Berlin based curator, researcher and artist. She graduated in Art History and Comparative Literature at Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo and completed the Post- Master International Curatorial Program École du MAGASIN, Centre for Contemporary Art (Grenoble, France) where she co-curated a solo show of Liam Gillick. In 2015 she was awarded a Master of Excellence Scholarship in Media Arts Cultures, master program conducted by four international universities: Danube University, Krems (Austria), Aalborg University (Denmark), University of Lodz (Poland) and City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong). She has collaborated as curator, curatorial assistant, researcher and artist with various institutions, festivals, galleries and contemporary art spaces in Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Denmark and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Since 2021 she is a researcher at The New Centre for Research and Practice.

 

Anders Ehlin is a Berlin based, awarded composer and sound artist, mainly working in the fields of cinema, installation art and art in public space. He has a BA in Cinematology from Stockholm University and an MA in Sonic Arts from UdK Berlin. In recent years Ehlin has delved into artistic research around language, cognitive dissonance and resonating bodies. This research has solidified into a directly related sound sculptural practice, and his artworks have been exhibited at The Vitra Design Museum (Wald-am-Rein), Aperto Raum (Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), RA (London) and more. His compositional practice spans from lush orchestra and choir works to immersive multi-channel compositions, blending musique concrète, cinematic scoring and modern aesthetics. Ehlin recently finished composing the protest opera Wem gehört Lauratibor against aggressive speculation on urban housing, performed as a demonstration in Berlin and at The Copenhagen Opera Festival during summer 2021. He is also the performing sound artist in the urban interventional dance project Tape Riot, having performed in places such as South Korea, Kosovo, Germany and USA. In 2021 Selma and Anders founded The New Liquidity, an interdisciplinary research platform and collective for artistic and curatorial practices. They use the term liquidity as a referential trampoline to facilitate speculation and porosity of borders as a means of artistic expression and the creation of alternative and/or potential scenarios.

 

 Project description 

Within the Prosper Residency Program, the artists will develop a hybrid site-specific soundwalk as a part of their ongoing project Underwater Cosmologies, investigating water histories. By focusing on the environmental landscape of Lake Ohrid, they will combine artistic research with acoustic ecology and immersive technology to further the understanding of aquatic biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems.

In a time of climate and ecological emergency, the duo uses binaural soundwalks to foster a critical discourse and imaginative possibilities around the current status and future of the freshwater ecosystems at a perilous moment in time. By investigating the lake as a deep archive the artists want to examine water’s fluid heritage as a place of geo-cultural and human-non-human memory.

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Julia Eichler (Visual Artist)

Julia Eichler was born 1983 in Berlin, she obtained her diploma in sculpture from Burg Giebichenstein Art College in 2017 and pursued further studies under Prof. Bruno Raetsch, earning a master's degree in 2019. Her career is marked by significant achievements, including scholarships such as a 1-year grant from Stiftung Konstfonds Bonn and a 6-month scholarship under "NEUSTART KULTUR." Recognized for her sculptural talent, she got a 3 month residency at "Künstlerhäuser Worpswede". This accomplished artist's work has left a lasting impression on galleries and spaces such as Adlerhallen in Berlin, Galerie Borchardt in Hamburg, and AO Kunsthalle in Leipzig. From „Parallel Narratives“ to „Exit Flexible“, her art has resonated across various cities, showcasing her dynamic contributions to contemporary sculpture.

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 Project description 

The artist Julia Eichler will deal with illegal buildings, ruins, and abandoned places in Ohrid and its surroundings. She will develop a negative duplicate in which parts of reality are immanent, as layers of paint and traces of material remain attached alongside the molded texture. She will play with the expectations of what a "wall" is and how it is supposed to function and oppose walls that are diametrically opposed to the original in their characteristics. These walls are made of papier-mâché. Illegal buildings, which often have their origin in a rapidly growing tourism industry, are problematic. Building ruins caused by construction stops and deconstruction work are a defining image in many places and trigger different reactions. They can be perceived as eyesores in the city or as disturbances in nature. Unsecured building materials and hazardous substances have a negative impact on the environment. Building ruins can also be understood as spaces of opportunity. A small stop in the capitalist mill. A temporarily opening space for art, graffiti, installations, encounters. But questions about longer-term communal, unconventional and non-commercial uses can also arise.

 

Kata Győrfi (Poet and Playwright)

Kata Győrfi is a Hungarian poet and bilingual playwright from Romanian who has been publishing for more than ten years. In 2019, her first book of poems was published under the title Te alszol mélyebben (You sleep deeper), which was nominated for the György Petri literary award and was in the top ten nominees of the Péter Horváth Literary Scholarship. Her plays in Romanian and Hungarian have been performed and translated since 2017. The poems of her next book depict a post-apocalyptic natural world. In her dramas, she is interested in loneliness, circumventing the rules of being among people, and what those people are like who for some reason do not automatically fit in, who think of themselves as a mistake in the seemingly perfect system. She is currently represented by Jelenkor Kiadó in Hungary.

 

 Project description 

My next poetry volume, "Mayfly Underground," is inspired by a sense of anxiety that I believe is globally shared. With this volume, I aim to raise questions about our responsibility toward the natural world and our own nature. I want to explore what we can allow ourselves and others to do and envision various scenarios for when the air may run out or when the ground we believed to be eternal may slip away.

The individual poems are post-human mostly non-anthropocentric world-fantasies that emerge following environmental and historical collapses. Catastrophes, geophysical, meteorological, and climatic events of recent years, such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides, droughts, forest fires, storms, and floods, inspire the visions of the future in the poems to be negative, so that the omen of fantasy worlds is primarily dystopian. The reader will perceive these as poems of a catastrophic future, with colors, materials, and phenomena that are almost familiar but not quite the same as the world we live in. In these poems, I blend lyrical reality, speculation, imagination, and factuality, weaving our collective awareness of the present world with an alternate reality that is distinctly poetic. By harmonizing science and imagination, art and poetry, we can capture public attention and spotlight the stark realities of our world’s environmental damage. This, in essence, is my creative mission.

 

Qafar Rzayev (Visual Artist, Performer and Multidisciplinary Artist)

Born in 1993 in the vibrant city of Ganja, Azerbaijan, this artist's journey has been a constant exploration of concepts and social engagement. After two years of university studies, the decision was made to quit the studies and focus fully on the artistic path. The ARTIMLAB studio program in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 2017 to 2018, played a pivotal role in shaping their early artistic endeavors. Over the years, their work has been showcased in various international settings, from online platforms like Yarat Contemporary Art Space to physical spaces such as the ARTIM project space in Baku, Azerbaijan. The artist's work has reached international acclaim through various projects, each contributing a unique brushstroke to their evolving narrative. From "The Story of a Boy with a White Bed Sheet" at Zaratan Air in Lisbon, Portugal, to the immersive experience at Hirvitalo in Tampere, Finland, their art transcends borders, creating connections and dialogues.

 

 Project description 

Rzayev will develop an interactive art project that aims to raise awareness about the environmental threats facing Lake Ohrid and invite the community to participate in creating an art installation that symbolizes unity and environmental action. The project will involve collecting discarded plastic bottles from the surrounding area, transforming them into unique invitation letters filled with dyed water, and using these bottles to construct a collaborative installation that highlights the importance of protecting Lake Ohrid's delicate ecosystem.

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Marija Vidovic (Muralist and Visual Artist)

Marija Vidović is a muralist and illustrator based in Belgrade, Serbia. Inspired by nature, stories, and everyday experiences, she combines abstract and figurative elements into captivating compositions and color combinations that often portray a story or an experience.

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 Project description 

Creating a series of street murals to enhance Ohrid's visual landscape. 

The murals created during this project will serve as visual testaments to the interconnectedness between human communities and their natural surroundings. By portraying Lake Ohrid's unique ecosystems, history, mythology, and cultural significance, they will celebrate the profound relationship between people and place. At the same time, these murals will evoke a sense of responsibility, encouraging viewers to reflect on the periphery that is, in fact, at the center of our existence—Nature itself.